Referring to FIG. 1, a diagram of a conventional Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) menu page 10 is shown. The menu page 10 includes a background image 12, several thumbnail pictures 14a-14f and one or more navigation buttons 16a-16b. The DVD menu page 10 is commonly the first picture to appear when playing a DVD disk on a commercial player/recorder.
The image 12 is often stored in a nonvolatile memory within the player/recorder. The image 12 is used to create a visual background template for the thumbnail pictures 14a-14f. Usually, 4 to 8 thumbnail pictures 14a-14f are in a single menu page 10, one thumbnail picture 14a-14f for each title of a video program. If the number of titles in the program exceeds the thumbnail capacity of the menu 10, the menu 10 has several pages and thus is called a multi-page menu. The buttons 16a-16b control movement between menu pages. The buttons 16a-16b are commonly named NEXT and PREVIOUS.
Menu navigation is triggered by a hand-held remote control unit associated with the player/recorder. By pressing the arrow keys on the remote control, a central focus on a display can be moved either to any of the thumbnail pictures 14a-14f or to any of the buttons 16a-16b. By activating the selected object, the player/recorder either plays the selected title or executes the button to change the menu page 10 to either the next page or the previous page, as appropriate.